It wasnt like I wao, you know, grab life in a passionate embrad vow o let it go until it let go of me. In a way, it makes things worse, not better. Once you stop pretending that everythings shitty and you t wait to get out of it, which is the story Id been telling myself for a while, then it gets more painful, not less. Telling yourself life is shit is like ahetid when you stop taking the Advil, then you really tell how much it hurts, and where, and its not like that kind of pain does anyone a whole lot of good.
And it was kind of appropriate that I was with my ex-lover and my ex-brother at the precise moment I realized, because it was the same kind of thing. I loved them, and would always love them. But there was no place where they could fit any more, so I had o put all the things I felt. I didnt know what to do with them, and they didnt know what to do with me, and isnt that just like life?
I never said anything about finishing with you because you werent going to be a rock star, said Lizzie after a while. You know that really, dont you? I shook my head. I didnt know, did I? You guys back me up on that. Not on this story have I ever owned up to any kind of misuanding, deliberate or otherwise. So far as I was ed, she was dumping me because I was a musical loser.
So what did you say, then? Try again. And Ill listen real hard this time.
Its not going to make any differenow, because weve all moved ht? Kind of. I wasnt going to admit to standing still, oing backwards.
OK. What I said was, I couldh you if you werent a musi.
It wasnt such a big deal to you at the time. You dont even like music that much.
Youre not hearing me, JJ. Youre a musi. Its not just what you did.
Its who you are. And Im not saying yoing to be a successful musi. I dont even know if youre a good o was just that I could see youd be no use to anyone if you stopped. And look what happened. You break the band up, and five minutes later youre standing oop of a tower-block. Youre stuck with it. And without it youre dead. Or you might as well be.
So… OK. Nothing to do with being unsuccessful.
God, what do you take me for? But I wasnt talking about her; I was talking about me. I never looked at it that way before. I thought this whole thing had been about my failure, but that wasnt it. And at that moment I felt like g my fug heart out, really. I felt like g because I knew she was right, and sometimes the truth gets you like that. I felt like g because I was going to make music again, and Id missed it so much. And I felt like g because I khat making music was never going to make me successful, so Lizzie had just ned me to ahirty-five years of poverty, rootlessness, despair, h plan, cold-water motels and bad hamburgers. Its just that Id be eating the burgers, not flipping them.
MARTIN
I walked home, turhe phone off and spent the forty-eight hours with the curtains drawn, drinking, sleeping and watg as many programmes about antiques as I could find. During those forty-eight hours, I would say that I was in grave danger of turning into Marie Prevost, the Hollywood actress who was discovered some time after her death in a state of disrepair, due to her corpse having been partially eaten by her dachshund. That I had no dachshund, or indeed any domestic pet, I remember being a source of some solation in those couple of days. I would certainly die alone, and my corpse would certainly be in a state of a